The illegal wildlife trade is worth tens of billions of dollars each year and dramatically impacts legally operating businesses and tourism around the world.

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Rhino horn: over $60,000/kg (2014)

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Elephant ivory (raw): $2,142/kg (2014)

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Elephant ivory (China): $730/kg (2017)

Reported wildlife trafficking and seizures of animal parts have increased dramatically the past few years. The illicit wildlife and plant trade is estimated to be worth $70-213 billion a year (PDF) and infringes on the natural resources of countries and wealth of businesses around the world. It's also contributing to the extinction of tigers, bears, elephants, rhinoceroses, and hundreds of other incredible species while criminal organizations and rebel militias profit.

Finding ways to contribute to wildlife conservation is becoming easier and more opportunities to get involved are available to individuals of all skill levels from anywhere in the world. While governments and private organizations race to save the world's wildlife you can create your own fundraisers, show your support by crowd-funding projects, and even volunteer in at-risk areas with anti-poaching rangers.

PoachingFacts.com aims to put the essential resources in your hands with unbiased descriptions of historical events and raw facts so that you can make the contribution to wildlife conservation that suits you.

Who are the buyers of tiger and leopard skins?

With only a couple thousand tigers left in the wild several Asian nations have turned to large-scale captive breeding techniques to supply their commercial farming industry. These businesses, especially within China, provide consumers with tiger skins, bones, and "medicinal" tiger bone wine. Although trade in tigers is prohibited internationally, as well as domestically within many countries, there is a persistent black market for fresh tiger meat for the rich.

What kinds of poachers are there?

Wildlife poachers are the people on the ground illegally hunting, fishing, and snaring. Not all illegal hunting is the same and while some groups struggle to survive others are seeking out ways to exploit the environment and profit from it as quickly as possible even at the expense of their community and nation. Many factors contribute to the different kinds of individuals who illegally hunt animals, illegally fish, or harvest plants or trees that are not their own. Often these people form criminal groups or are already part of organized criminal groups or insurgent militias and commit other major crimes as well.

Who are the buyers of rhino horn?

Rhino horn has been highly prized by several cultures for over a thousand years and trade records suggest that the intercontinental trade in African rhino horn to the Far East has existed for centuries. Their horns are prized as a status symbol, used in the handles of traditional Yemeni daggers. Many myths surround the use and utility of rhino horn, but practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine still use powdered horn to attempt to relieve high fevers. Rhino blood, urine, and skin is also collected for use in some folk medicines, but acquiring rhino horn is the main goal of African poachers.

What wildlife species are being targeted by poachers?

In Africa and Asia the high-value targets are elephants for their ivory tusks, rhinoceros for their horn, and leopards for their beautiful skins.

Unique poaching targets in Asia include the Asian black bear which is captured and harvested for years for its bear bile and considered to be an essential Traditional Chinese medicine. Bear paw, along with tiger parts, shark fin, sea turtles, pangolins (scaly anteaters), and manta ray are fashionable delicacies in Asia and the South Pacific and many are inhumanely farmed or illegally hunted.

What are governments doing to combat environmental crimes?

Law enforcement and non-governmental organizations around the world are constantly planning and conducting operations to catch environmental criminal groups and fugitives involved in environmental crimes. These crimes may occur at local, regional, national, or transnational levels and include the illegal trade in live animals; illegal trade in wildlife parts and trophies; pollution of air, water, and soil; over-exploitation of fishing grounds; climate change crime and corruption; illegal logging; natural resource theft; and biosecurity.

What resources are available about the past and present poaching crises?

Poaching Facts provides a number of resources for layman, scholars, and students researching environmental crimes and wildlife conservation. In our archives we have aggregated a vast array of links and information in our index of research, reports, and publications conducted by NGOs and governmental agencies. We also have a large list of wildlife and poaching news as well as documentaries and videos about front-line anti-poaching organizations and conservation groups as well as useful reference books for academics, and even book reviews for wildlife lovers.

Most poachers and African criminal syndicates receive only 5-10% of the retail value for the animal parts they poach. Even in destitute parts of Africa and Asia this is little reward for what can be a very risky task of spending days tracking dangerous wildlife in their natural habitat. Coordinated efforts to exterminate rhino and elephants in central Africa, as well as systematic poaching in Southeast Asia and China, have made it easier for criminal syndicates to organize a market for tiger and leopard skins, elephant ivory, and rhino horn. This has provided a channel for low-level poachers and high-level rebel militias to sell their animal parts to middlemen who then smuggle the cargo en mass to destinations around the globe where the items are sold for exorbitant prices.

In 2013 the street-price for rhino horn in Asia was $60,000-100,000 per kilogram. At roughly $1,700-2,840 per ounce, more than the price of gold, it was believed to be a better investment than real estate and an easy way to show off wealth. According to anti-poaching forces in South Africa a Mozambican poacher would earn R100,000 ($10,000) per hunt or over R200,000 per horn depending on the middleman.

In January of 2015 Ugandan officials seized a shipment of 137 ivory tusks weighing 700 kg and destined for Amsterdam. The ivory in this shipment had an estimated street value of $1.5 million or $2,142 per kilo or roughly $973 per pound. As a result of international pressure to end the illicit ivory trade, as well as other factors impacting legal domestic markets where elephant ivory is still sold, the average price of ivory in China has fallen to $730 per kilogram ($331 per pound).